Editorial note — LESSON I.

[Footnote A: Century Dictionary. Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Geology and Natural History in the University of California, discussing what belief in God would be for rational philosophy, says: "It is the belief in a God not far away beyond our reach, who once long ago enacted laws and created forces which continue of themselves to run the machine we call nature, but a God immanent, a God resident in Nature, at all times and in all places directing every event and determining every phenomenon; a God in whom in the most literal sense not only we but all things have their being, in whom all things consist, through whom all things exist, and without whom there would be and could be nothing. According to this view the phenomena of Nature are naught else than objectified modes of divine thought, the forces of Nature naught else than different forms of one omnipresent, divine energy or will; the laws of Nature naught else than the regular modes of operation of that divine will, invariable because he is unchangeable. According to this view the law of gravitation is naught else than the mode of operation of the divine energy in sustaining the cosmos—the divine method of sustentation." ("Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought"—1902—pp. 300, 301.)]